Mystery Twins, 2 point O
by Neverlocke
Summary: Several oneshots of the younger Pines growing up together as the next generation of Mystery Twins, and trying to avoid the mistakes that Stan and Ford had made that had broke the two apart.
1. Chapter 1

_Property of -_

"Aww, man!" Dipper groaned as the bus jolted again, ruining his signature for the third time. He reached for the eraser, but it wasn't where he remembered placing it. Writing utensils seemed to have the same properties of the unseen Hide-behind: they were always THERE, but they could never be found. "Mabel, have you seen the eraser?"

She hadn't. It took around half a minute, but the two of them found it halfway under Dipper's seat.

"Huh. I guess it dropped somehow. Thanks, Mabel."

Dipper started to erase the jagged mistake. He would rather be using his pens, but the Oregon roads guaranteed disaster, and he was borrowing both the pencil and the hideously bright neon eraser from Mabel. Ink could wait until the bus arrived at Piedmont. He hadn't even decided how to start his new journal yet: Great Uncle Ford's first page on all three of his journals had included a title page with his name, though of course the latter half of the page of Journal 3 had been torn. Dipper intended to do the same, but...

"I still can't decide," Dipper said, staring at the nearly-blank page. "How should I introduce myself, Mabel? I mean, Dipper's the name I think of myself by, but then there's my official name, but I kinda like the ring of naming myself Pine Tree. Sounds all code-namey and symbolic and stuff. But everything seems… wrong, somehow. Any ideas?"

"I don't know," Mabel responded quietly, almost in a sigh. "Dipper, I guess?"

Dipper looked up at Mabel. It wasn't like his usually upbeat twin to answer so lacklusterly, and now that he thought about it, Mabel hadn't given her customary 'You're welcome' for him thanking her. She hadn't even made fun of him for losing her eraser in the first place, and that should definitely have set off some red flags. Mabel was gazing out the window, absentmindedly scratching behind Waddle's ears, ignoring her beloved pig as Waddles squealed happily. Normally, she'd be all giggly and pretending he was D.J. Hogg or something equally suited to drive him crazy. Something was definitely wrong.

"Hey, you OK?" Dipper ventured, shutting the journal. "You seem kinda, I don't know, down."

Silence for a few seconds except for the low growl of the engine and the grunts of a pig. Dipper opened his mouth to ask again when Mabel replied.

"I'm fine, I think. I guess I just miss everyone already. The Grunkles, Wendy, Soos, Candy, Greta… I even miss Grompers. Is it weird that I'm missing a goat?"

"Hey, as long as it's not Bill, you can miss whoever you want," Dipper quipped, eliciting a small smile from Mabel. "I'll even say that I miss Pacifica, even though she's still the worst."

"Dipper..." Mabel interjected in a warning tone that Dipper had heard many times before. Dipper raised his hand quickly and resumed speaking before Mabel could defend Pacifica, and he suppressed a shudder. Power of Mabel indeed.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding! But yeah, I miss them already too. All the crazy adventures we had together, like fighting an army of living wax figurines, or busting up the Society of the Blind Eye..."

"Or doing a certain dance to escape a pair of teenager-hating ghosts?"

"We do NOT talk about that night, and we DEFINITELY don't talk about that dance!" Dipper exclaimed vehemently, as Mabel unsuccessfully tried not to snicker. Making jokes (even at his expense) was still a step up from moping, so hey, improvement. "Anyways, what I was going to say was that through all the mystery and mayhem, there was nothing we couldn't do when we did it together. And we're gonna miss Gravity Falls, and all our friends we made there, and getting used to boring Piedmont's going to be difficult, but you know what? We'll be doing it all together, missing them and all.

"Thanks, Dipper," Mabel replied after a pause. "Though you really need to work on your motivational speaking skills. I mean, 'We'll suffer together' is kind of blah."

Dipper rolled his eyes, though he was inwardly satisfied. Mabel was back to normal, or at least back to Mabel-normal which by most definitions, come to think of it, wasn't actually normal.

"You can be the people-twin, I'll be the - "

"Geeky, bookworm, know-it-all twin?"

"... Sure, whatever. Though I would've preferred something… nicer?"

"Mystery Twins, 2.0!" Mabel whooped before pinching Waddle's cheeks and grinning.

Dipper gasped. "Mabel, that's it!" He reopened the journal, eying the incomplete title page.

"Boop! Mabel does it again. What'd I do?"

Dipper didn't answer as he started to write, thinking back to the journal that he had carried for almost the entire summer. It was Ford's first, obviously, but Dipper had written a few entries himself while Ford was still stuck beyond the portal. But Dipper hadn't been the only one to record the weirdness that existed near Gravity Falls: Mabel and Soos had both made their marks in the Journal, recording important information that he didn't know.

That's why every name for himself as the author of the new journal seemed wrong. It wouldn't be right to declare that he was going to be the sole master of weirdness back at Piedmont - he didn't hold the monopoly on insight in Gravity Falls, and he probably wouldn't have it back at home.

Dipper grinned as he looked at the writing on the title page. He'd ink it later, and figure out how to add the Shooting Star symbol to the cover with his own Pine Tree. But until they arrived back in California, this would do.

 _Property of the Mystery Twins, 2.0._


	2. Chapter 2

"There, a 'Z' on that license plate! Looks like I get the win this time," Dipper exclaimed, pressing his finger against the bus window to point at the winning letter. "Two to one, Dipper!"

Mabel huffed, turning back to face her twin: Dipper had relocated to a window seat for this game. "You're lucky there wasn't a 'J' for forever."

"Hey, I had to find a 'J' as well, you know."

"Why was there an entire market just for jalapeños anyways?" Mabel questioned, referring to Dipper's find of the elusive letter. "They're bitter and spicy and just kinda blarrgh."

Dipper shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe they're one of the foods Mom and Dad keep saying we'll like when we get older?"

"Blarrgh."

"So, make it a best of five? I'll go backwards next time," Dipper offered. "And I won't use the 'Z' on that license plate."

"Nah, my eyes feel all jello-ey from staring at signs and billboards and bumper stickers. Let's do something else."

"Like what?" Dipper asked as he slid back into the seat next to Mabel, making sure that he didn't trip over the sleeping form of Waddles. "Not that I'm unhappy to take the win again, but we've played all our normal travel games, and there's still several hours before we're back home."

Mabel thought about it for a second before spitting out ideas.

"Tic-tac-toe?"

"Ugh, that should always end in a draw. Pass."

"Karaoke!"

"There's no impending threat of death by zombie, so no."

"Minigolf?"

"... I'm going to let you answer that one," Dipper replied, gesturing to the size of the bus.

"I was only joking, silly," Mabel giggled, giving Dipper a light shove. "I know! What's your favorite memory from this summer?"

"It was that time… No, I mean it was when… Or maybe when we were investigating… Huh. I'm not sure. You go first."

"Nope, I asked the question, so you have to answer first!" Mabel cheerily insisted.

"Ugh, fine. Give me a minute," Dipper said, furrowing his brow as he reanalyzed different high points during their stay. Finding the journal, of course, that was a big one. Solving the mysteries of Gravity Falls, finding out that Stan had a brother who was the author of the journals, competing (and winning!) in Globnar and giving Soos an epic birthday, fighting Bill Cipher in the mindscape and finding out Stan actually cared for him. And then there was always the dance with Wend -

"Someone's thinking of a certain redhead," Mabel's sing-song voice broke into his train of thought.

Dipper yelped, and glared at his sister's teasing face. "I was thinking about the time Great Uncle Ford and I searched that spacecraft for an adhesive," he sputtered, picking a memory at random.

"Pfft. You can't hide anything from me, bro-bro. You get this weird smile when you think about Wendy." Her eyes grew even wider, and her grin rivaled the Cheshire cat's. "I just realized I get to tell Mom and Dad all about your first crush!"

"Then - then I'll tell them about your summer romances too!"

Mabel's gleeful expression suddenly turned into a grimace. "I… don't think you want to do that, Dipper."

"Hey, you embarrass me, I get to embarrass you. It's how it works."

"Not because of that… It's because, well…" Mabel looked to the side. "You remember Norman?"

Dipper snorted. "You mean Jeff, the gnome that tried to kidnap you to be the gnome queen and then led an army to destroy us? Of course I remember him."

"Yeahhhh, well… Imagine if you told our parents that."

"Huh? Oh," Dipper winced as he realized the repercussions of mentioning the near-death experience to their parents. "They wouldn't let us return to Gravity Falls."

Mabel nodded, and Dipper began recounting the other "romances" that he knew of.

"Gideon tried to kidnap you and kill me. Bill POSSESSED ME while you were trying to impress Gabe or whoever with those sock puppets - "

"Sorry, by the way."

"Water under the bridge, Mabel. Were there ANY of your summer romances that didn't end with someone trying to kill me?"

Mabel thought for a second. "Mermando, I think."

"Hmm? Oh yeah, I guess Mermando was a pretty cool dude...fish. Fish dude. That just sounds wrong. Merman?"

"He was so dreamy..." Mabel sighed, and Dipper could almost see the hearts in her eyes.

The speed at which his sister could go from ridiculous and teasing to serious to boy-crazy really was impressive, Dipper reflected. Might even be some sort of world record.

"Mabel, focus. What are we going to tell our parents about what happened at Gravity Falls? I don't think they'd let us go back if we told them even a fraction of our adventures here!"

"I guess we'll… just… not tell them the whole truth," Mabel said, again not making eye contact.

Dipper's jaw dropped. "You, Mabel Pines, are suggesting we lie to our parents? Don't get me wrong, it's a good idea, but I didn't think you'd be OK with that."

"Grunkle Stan and the Truth-telling Teeth," came the quiet response.

"Oh, right."

Suddenly, the time they had left on the bus seemed far too short. Dipper whipped out a notebook - not the journal - and a pen from his bag.

"We're going to have to make a list of things not to mention," he explained as he flipped to an unused page. "Gnomes are a no, Gideon's probably a no, Bill's definitely a no…"

"So much for not staring at letters anymore," Mabel grumbled before joining in. "What about President Quentin Trembley?"

"Hmm, probably a bad idea to bring up that president up. Too many questions to answer if we mention him. We could say he founded Gravity Falls, though, that should be fine. Spaceship, no. Dinosaurs, no."

"The time I ran the Mystery Shack and made Grunkle Stan sing the 'I'm sorry' song?"

"Ooh, good one. What else..."

Two hours later:

"Alright, I think we're done," Dipper said before releasing the pen from his cramped fingers and flipping through the five pages he had written on. It was horribly disorganized, but the general gist of it was that if it was supernatural or just completely weird, like Rumble McSkirmish or the mind-swapping rug, it was under the "Never Mind All That" category. Similarly, if the event in question had nearly killed them, it was also a "Never Mind All That." Everything else was fine, with the exception of… well, everything relating to Great Uncle Ford. He and Mabel had debated for awhile, but in the end decided that it should be Stan's and Ford's decision on how to break Ford's existence to the rest of the family. Even Mermando, in the end, wasn't going to be mentioned in the Pines' household.

"That's a lot of 'no's," Mabel noted in an impish tone. "But guess what I can tell about?"

The blood drained from Dipper's face as he realized his omission. A logical omission, but an omission nonetheless. And all his potential comebacks had been banned. "Oh, no."

"I can still tell them about you and Wendy!" she chortled.

Dipper sighed wearily. He wouldn't hear the end of this for some time, he was sure.

At least the rest of the bus ride wasn't boring.

 ** _A/N: Honestly, I'm not too happy with this chapter, but I kind of feel like this question needs to be answered for any Future Pines story: what do they tell their parents? To date, I think I've seen... Two where they (or at least Mabel) tells the whole truth about the events in Gravity Falls, both of which were Stan, Ford, and Shermie-centric and everyone else has them lying. Or at least omitting stuff. Having been 13 and unsure of certain consequences for actions I took, I'm going with lying as the more likely option._**

 _ **I would appreciate any criticism/advice, especially when it comes to characters being in or out of character: Mabel is easily harder for me, simply because I gravitate towards Dipper's mode of thinking. Many thanks!**_


End file.
